Stablecoin payments infra startup Cyclops raises $20M Series A led by Nava Ventures

Stablecoin infrastructure startup Cyclops has raised a $20 million Series A round to build an end-to-end stablecoin backbone for large global payment companies. The round was led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Circle Ventures, GPT Ventures and Lasagna Ventures, the company said.

The firm later thanked additional investors including Global PayTech Ventures, F-Prime Capital and OpenFX, indicating a broader payments- and fintech-focused cap table. Cyclops did not disclose valuation or deal structure.

Cyclops is positioning itself as a single integration layer that orchestrates best-of-breed providers across stablecoin settlement, payouts, payment acceptance, treasury and licensing into one API for payment platforms and networks. The company targets large processors and networks that currently juggle multiple vendors for wallets, on/off ramps, FX and compliance, leading many to adopt only narrow stablecoin use cases.

The founding team previously built The Giving Block, a crypto donations platform that it says achieved more than 90% market share among nonprofits accepting crypto. Cyclops says its current platform volume is growing 350% month over month and that it is already working with "the industry's top payments platforms," without naming specific clients.

The company has hired leaders from Coinbase, Fiserv, Shift4, JPMorgan, Spreedly, SpaceX and Paysafe, and joined the Mastercard Crypto Program as part of its go-to-market with incumbent payments infrastructure. Compliance is led by Coinbase's former global chief compliance officer, and Cyclops says it leverages more than 100 licenses across partners to give clients multiple regulated options per region.

Cyclops plans to use the capital to deepen its stack for payment platforms, including stablecoin settlement with faster merchant payouts, global B2B and B2C payouts, stablecoin and crypto acceptance with instant settlement, and treasury optimization for FX, liquidity and yield. The company is hiring across functions as it targets large payment processors looking to move more volume onto stablecoin rails.